


Pedestals

by Quixotism



Category: The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Coda: Typical Auckland God, Gen, Introspection, Lyricism at its best, M/M, Or worst, Sort of Coda, Ty-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quixotism/pseuds/Quixotism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His skin simply pales like floor wide marble, used to scrapes and marks. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pedestals

The problem with four is the middle. 

You can’t pick one person to tug back and forth, to mediate, to calm the tides. It’s an intrinsic problem, their grandfather tells them, his voice rumbling above the waves, because four was too even a number to divide. Four kingdoms can support, but they can collapse should one stray. Four pillars for a table can topple too quickly. There is no center. 

Ty asks if they were doomed and Olaf laughs; the crash of a crest on sandy homes. He ruffles Ty’s hair, his fingers brushing over the scar on Ty’s cheek and proclaims that it’s time for surfing.

Ty watches as his grandfather sinks into the blue and white foam, his sunburnt skin alit with power. He rubs his fingers but no fire comes to his palms, no glory, no manly tan. His skin simply pales like floor wide marble, used to scrapes and marks. 

His mother scolds Olaf when he comes back, but Ty simply tells his mother that he won’t let them fall. His mother doesn’t understand but his grandfather winks at him from the corner of his sun kissed wrinkle. Ty tried to mimic the action but it falls short.

Years later, when Anders leaves and Mike marries Val and Axl moves out with Zeb, Ty is left grasping at straws. He talks to Anders, gets nothing in return. He talks to Mike, gets parables. He talks to Axl, gets sentence laced with hormones and a bright future. It would inspire him if he knew what a future tastes like. He suspects it is like honey on bread, too warm, too golden to hold. It would waste on his fingers, sinking into his nails. 

Scrapes and marks. 

He keeps trying, but he spends more and more time in his ice sculpture room, where he can make sense of a world that’s slipping away each passing day. Or he can scrape out his own wounds into ice and can think to himself, “Here I bleed.”

Morbid, but no one has accused him of being warm.

Axl goes to college. They linger in the edges of each other’s houses for one. Ty bites his fingernails. No one looks anymore. 

Then, all too suddenly, Axl is Odin, the world has merged into an apocalypse of need and desire and power and fury. Ty finds Dawn, loses Dawn, finds Dawn, loses Dawn and it is so repetitive that his bones ache, but he tastes honey in his skin and he develops a tan somewhere along the line of casting off his skin. He has nothing else so he pursues the pattern until his house burns down and he decides that enough with pedestals and numbers and all the life lessons that his family has marred on him. He gives the finger to everything.

It’s Anders who finds him first. After the choked out no of denial and Dawn quietly steps out, after the frozen glass of wine is tossed into the garbage, after Olaf starts snoring, that Anders creeps into the house like … the creeper he is, Ty admits. 

He has removed his shirt. The old marks fade quickly and sometimes he wishes they would last the night. But even the T’s and E’s of everlasting are weak to time. Like everything else. He’s leaning against the counter, afraid to cry, afraid to find them turn to ice after they leave his body. Anders calmly takes the bottle from his hands and Ty protests weakly, but nothing comes out. He almost expects the puff of cold air to smother them both, but Anders simply shakes his head and guides Ty to the couch. 

Ty mumbles the number four to Anders and Anders is exasperated. Then he replies that he knew all about it, and that Olaf fed them the same speech that day.

“You think too hard about everything,” Anders says finally, tucking a pillow under Ty’s head. His fingers brushes against Ty’s imaginary bruises (like Anders has always known) and his face feels human, not marble and scrapes. 

Ty croaks out a question, why come back? 

Anders rolls his eyes, “I never left.”

The pedestals still rest. The table stands. 

Ty closes his eyes to the sound of the waves upon the shore, sunlight peeking through the clouds. For him.


End file.
